West Australia – Unskeptical conservatives wiped out in election – No Trump, No Brexit vote

Don’t mention the climate — unskeptical conservatives give away some of their best weapons

The local Liberals (conservatives) got smashed on the weekend in the Western Australian election. Polls predicted it, but instead of a Trump-surprise, Colin Barnett’s team got a nasty shock instead — wiped out. There was no “hidden vote” waiting there because the local Liberals are just another brand of The Establishment. There is nothing politically brave about them.

In WA climate was a non-issue, yet pandering to the religion still cost conservatives. One of the main election messages was about the privatisation of “Western Power” (Electricity supplier). This strange spectacle unfolded where McGowan, the leader who’d suggested the ridiculous 50% renewables target was thumping Barnett’s campaign with messages of fear about rising electricity prices after the privatization. Barnett didn’t hit back — No one seemed to notice the incongruity of Mr Renewables accusing someone else of making electricity expensive.

There are many reasons the WA Libs crashed (read some here). But the “climate” policy hole gets forgotten. Colin Barnett was unarmed, unskeptically accepting the unaudited foreign committee reports. In 2014, when semi-skeptical-Abbott was PM, the premier of a state that lives off mining and energy wasn’t even brave enough to go with the federal government of the day. Barnett publicly backed Obama’s climate plans instead.

Like Turnbull, Barnett missed the chance to roast the opposition for pandering to the climate faith, wasting money, making energy unaffordable, crippling industry etc etc etc.

Last year the WA Labor party waved the fantasy that this 13% renewables state could become a 50% Renewable Energy State. This should have been ripe fodder since it was South Australia on steroids: bigger and more risky. We’re a small isolated grid, not connected to the rest of Australia. There’s no hydro, no nukes, and no hope of another state keeping us running. We would be the blackout-state-in-waiting. But weeks ago, after yet another South Australian debacle unfolded — and leader of the Labor Party, Mark McGowan dropped the 50% target. Criticism was muted instead of savage.

Turnbull couldn’t unleash on his opponents in last years election, and neither could Barnett. Unskeptical politicians are just firing blanks.

193 comments to West Australia – Unskeptical conservatives wiped out in election – No Trump, No Brexit vote

While Brexit and Trump are connected with the right, their biggest draw was being anti-establishment. I guess the establishment just refuses to see that and so they think there is some “magic” in the votes.

Brexit had a very important block of votes from the NE of England —”working class” area and as we now know Trump had a huge help from the “rust belt” voters in the USA.
This change is not just a right-left thing.

You are absolutely correct, it’s more a fundamentalist libertarian movement. People want to return to government by the people for the people rather than special interests of any flavour or just left/not so left. They want government in the best interests of their sovereign nation rather than contiually making unaffordable PC gestures to other nations. Australians FIRST, not refugees first or aboriginals first or polar bears first… Trump gets it, and his “America First” policy names it. The people want to be left alone to make their way without the costant interference in their lives by government PC moralising or excessive regulatiins of ponds, puddles and lightbulbs.

I do believe that Mizz May has shown all the”Nay Sayers”who said she wouldn’t invoke”Article 50″that maybe she has the UK’s best interests at heart.As President Trump said”You can get on board the Trump Train,or get run over”Mizz Mays”Train”is leaving the station.Get on board or get run over.CHOO,CHOO.

I was hoping the people of WA would send a message to the two major party’s like Australians did in last years Federal election, unfortunately the MSM (fifth column) are still effective enough to mask the real issues that will impact voters luring them to make lazy voting decisions yet again.

Sadly regular blackouts and low food production might be the only thing to bitch slap the proles into action, but even then…….

It appears to me that the general public have woken up to the fact that climate alarmism is nonsense but the politicians have yet to catch on. They still think that alarmism is supported by sound science and, that being the case, they have to show the lead to the ignorant plebs to stop them from sleepwalking into thermageddon.

Chickens coming home to roost now. Even The Age has noticed although they are still confused about the causes. It is barely a month since the Victorian Minister (Lily D’ambrosio) assured me in a letter that all was fine with our energy supply, in the very face of the closure of the Hazelwood power station, which I had begged her to keep running.

Speaking of things coming home to roost – the ABC crying “foul” despite it being rather one sided in its politcal coverage ( PS – I’m not endorsing one nation in any way, rather the double stanbdard shown by the ABC when they cant be pria donnas when it suits them…)

And heres CAGW being one of the biggest attacks on democracy…and guess who gives CAGW lots of one-sided air time?….

“The ABC has expressed concern about the exclusion of its journalists from a One Nation function on WA election night, saying it could be seen as an attack on both the broadcaster and the role of media in a democracy.

Journalists Nicolas Perpitch and Michael Edwards, from the national broadcaster, were refused entry to the event at Melville Bowling Club in Perth’s south on Saturday night while party leader Senator Pauline Hanson addressed supporters.

ABC editorial director Alan Sunderland said in a statement that other media representatives attended on the night without any prior arrangements or permission being required.

“Those other media representatives, who included broadcasters, agencies and newspaper reporters from inside and outside Western Australia, were granted immediate access to the event,” the statement said.”

Peter, you can put your mind at ease. The Wetherall and Andrews governments have fixed the lack of base load back up with individual announcements today.

They are going to spend tens of millions on battery back up!

In Wetheralls case to fix a problem his government created that has cost the state billions.
In Andrews case to prevent the coming electricity catastrophe his government has created that will have the billions price tag attached as well.
And what do we the voting public do as this catastrophe continues to unfold before our eyes right across the country!?
I don’t know wether to laugh or cry.

Yeh! And I smell another lot of a few billion dollars of OPM Desalination Plant debacles coming on fast in SA and Vic.

Somewhere, sometime and maybe very soon, somebody here in Australia is going to read the politics or complete lack of any semblance of sanity in the political class and take a gamble and get around to building a very late design, Ultra Super Critical High Efficiency, Low Emissions [ Ultra Super Critical HELE ] power generator.
And that will make whirling Windmill Weatherill and Dopey Despot Dan of Victoria look like the ignorant fools they are as they so often demonstrate .
They are absolutely intent on spending all that tax payers money on yet another stupid and ill thought out technologies that are already approaching obsolescence or have been proven impractical and hideously expensive.
In short complete failures both practically and economically.
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And it is all to cover for the politicians of every party’s own utter stupidity in running down the entire Australian formerly highly efficient and utterly reliable coal fired power supply and the making the big base load generators completely uneconomic by the absolute stupidity of heavily subsidising wind and solar and then expecting unsubsidised power coal fired generators that have been loaded with every concievable impost by those same politicians, to continue to operate.

And the reliability and the cheapness of the power from those big coal fired base load generators are the very basis upon which our city’s prosperity and industry is and has been for some three generations now, so heavily based.

The coal fields are located close to and on the route of the Ghan railway to Alice springs and Darwin .
The very under-utilised Ghan rail route is already there and fully operational and looking for traffic.
It is of a very heavy rail construction and could easily handle a few extra train loads of coal each day for the thousand or so kilometres run to a new Port Augusta based power Ultra Super Critical HELE power generator.

The Americans railroads run mile to two mile long coal trains with 3 or 4 engines in front and a couple in the middle from the enormous coal fields of Wyoming, a thousand or more miles east to the main coal fired eastern sea board power stations.
And they run them every twenty minutes, all running one way with the fully loaded trains running east on the best grade lines and the returning empty trains using another line with steeper grades.

I know because those damn fully loaded coal trains ran down the corridor every twenty minutes of a motel that we stayed in alongside of the rail line in I think, South Dakota.
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Now SA’s whacko Wetherill and Konstantkickass are going to spend $500 million of SA’s and the rest of Australia’s hard earned on a gas fired generator and a bloody battery that cost a good slice of SA’s annual GDP and will “possibly” provide a couple of minutes of power to SA when the lights are about to go out when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine and the Vics are staring at yet another utterly stupid politically created blackout disaster in the face themselves so they close down the interlinks to SA.[ and NSW ]

The South Australian Government has announced it will spend more than $500 million to build a new gas-fired power plant and Australia’s largest battery as it moves to secure the state’s energy supplies.
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The government will build, own and operate a new $360 million, 250-megawatt gas-fired power plant.

Australia’s largest battery will be built before next summer, by the private sector, and be funded from a $150 million renewable technology fund.

SA’s energy minister will have the power to order a generator to be switched on if more supply is needed (a power held by the AEMO)

A doubling of an already announced scheme to incentivise new gas supply for local generation

Land owners to receive 10% of state royalties generated from gas wells on their properties

There’s a plan to supply “coal-rich” states with power generated in SA

So for the princely outlay of $500 million, half a billion dollars, the South Aussies get a 250 megawatts gas fired power generator that apparently is going to be able to supply a good deal of the rest of Australia just a soon as Wetherill decrees it will do so.
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Now if Wetherill and dopey Dan had actually learnt to read at school instead of playing at politics they could have looked all of the following up themselves;

Shenhua Shenwan Energy Company’s Anqing Power Plant Phase II’s 2×1000-MW expansion project is a prominent example of HELE coal-fired power in China. In this project, Shenwan adopted a series of design innovations to optimize environmental performance based on the specific features of China’s coal-fired power sector as well as Shenhua Group’s development strategy to be a world-class supplier of clean energy.
Using the latest technological achievements, Shenwan constructed a high-capacity, efficient, and low-emissions coal-fired power plant, which is currently considered to be the state of the art in China. For example, the plant boasts the highest steam parameters in China (see Table 1), resulting in the efficient utilization of coal with extremely low emissions.
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The scope of the construction of the Anqing Phase II project included two identical ultra-supercritical coal-fired power units, including limestone-gypsum wet desulfurization (FGD) and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) denitrification facilities that were built simultaneously.

Construction commenced on 1 March 2013, and the two units were commissioned with the compulsory 168 hours of full-load testing on 31 May and 19 June 2015.

Together, this low-emissions technology chain drastically reduces emissions of PM, SO2, NOx, heavy metals, etc.
Not only are the emissions less than the national standards where the Anqing plant is sited,2 they are also lower than the emission limits for newly built coal-fired power units in the central regions.

In addition, the new units at Anqing actually surpass the limits for gas-fired units as prescribed in the “Action Plan for Coal Energy Saving, Emission Reduction, Upgrading and Alteration (2014–2020)” from the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Environmental Protection and National Energy Administration

Say it again! Sam!
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SA; Aud $500 million for 250 megawatts of low emission gas fired generator and one battery that might work a bit but like the desalination plants are absolutely useless in reality and will take a couple of years to build if it doesn’t burn or blow up whilst they are still putting it together.

Built in just over 22 months and with emissions that are LOWER than any gas fired power generator of a similar output and no doubt quite a lot lower per Mw of output compared to SA’s proposed gas generator particularly if as seems likely, the SA gas powered generator is an open cycle generator to maximise a fast start up.

The emissions and efficiencies of open cycle gas generators which can be up and running in minutes is fairly pathetic.

Closed cycle gas generators can operate with efficiencies of over 55% by having boilers to extract the heat from the gas turbines hot exhaust gas and a steam turbine to extract the energy from the gas turbine heated boiler steam means that start up times for the closed cycle gas turbines is calculated in hours.

Consequently closed cycle gas turbines are used as base load generators where they can run under load at quite high efficiencies.

Wetherill seems to be saying that the proposed SA gas turbine generator will be a fast response system to cover for when his wind turbines cark it again for the day and will therefore be of an open cycle and a not very efficient user of gas for its power generation .

South Australian’s @360 million for 250 Mw’s of gas fired generation capacity will be paying Aud $1.44 million dollars per Mw of generator output.
.China has paid Aud $632,000 per MW of output.

And with very much lower coal fueling costs compared to SA’s gas fired generators.
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Interesting technical details in the article as above for those interested.

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I truly despair at the utter stupidity and the complete lack of any semblance of intellectual input into any long range planning amongst the political class.

They are all so deep into imposing and imposting political correctness on everybody down to the lowest individual and with Saving the Planet that they have completely forgotten the very basics of our civilisation must be maintained and upgraded on a very regular timetable.

In short the political class are so incompetent in a technical and organisational sense that they could not plan and run a free night in a house of ill fame even though a number of them no doubt are quite familiar with the operations of such an establishment.
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These politics are confusing to me. But here goes. It seems that the conservative party was poorly led by an incompetent politician and this led to disaster. Now you are stuck with the leftists until the next election.
Questions: 1) Are there any conservatives who might show leadership, courage, anti-establishment politics, and promises of a way out of this mess? 2) How bad will the left wing leadership be?, and, 3) How long until the next election?

If people are expecting a Trump revolution here in Australia at any level of politics then they will be waiting probably forever. We simply do not have a Trump-like character in politics and there doesn’t appear to be one forthcoming. I wish someone in business did try but the problem Australia faces is it’s effectively a socialist state that has past the point of no return a long time ago unlike the US where they pulled the plug on socialism before it was too late. We on the other hand will have to crash and burn before enough Australians wake up to how rotten things here really are. When a person yells out that Bill Leak is a racist in ABC’s Q&A program in a government funded broadcaster that is extreme left biased, anti-West and pro-Islam while we supposedly have a Liberal PM who refuses to do anything about the ABC then is it any wonder why this country is doomed?

If people are expecting a Trump-like change here in Australia at any level of politics then they will be waiting probably forever. We simply do not have a Trump-like character in politics and there doesn’t appear to be one forthcoming. I wish someone in business did try but the problem Australia faces is it’s effectively a socialist state that has past the point of no return a long time ago unlike the US where they pulled the plug on socialism before it was too late. We on the other hand will have to crash and burn before enough Australians wake up to how rotten things here really are. When a person yells out that Bill Leak is a racist in ABC’s Q&A program in a government funded broadcaster that is extreme left biased, anti-West [snip] while we supposedly have a Liberal PM who refuses to do anything about the ABC then is it any wonder why this country is doomed?

Perhaps but not until after the crash and burn scenario is played out. We simply have not suffered enough under socialism to prefer something better. We have been the lucky country for too long. Time to face the real world.

We don’t have a president and won’t have a charismatic leader simply turn up, our lot are all career politicians inside a Westminster system where groupthink has become an art form.

The best chance we have is for Donald Trump (Alliance leader) to ridicule AGW and dismantle it, the MSM would go bananas and the Australian Conservative Party (ACP) (with Gina’s backing) should run in every seat, senate and reps, state and federal.

Ideally, if Tony Abbott departed the Liberals and joined the ACP he could be the next PM with Cory as senate leader, unfortunately Barnaby Joyce intends becoming the Transport and Infrastructure minister in a few months so we are unlikely to see any change in the status quo going forward.

There are some things about the Parliamentary governments that I like better than ours. One is the way third parties are easier to form and also grow. But yes, our system does let renegades rise to power faster than in Parliamentary governments. That is both good and bad. This time it is good for us.

Best of luck with your governments. It will not be easy or fast, but it can be done.

If people are expecting a Trump-like change here in Australia at any level of politics then they will be waiting probably forever. We simply do not have a Trump-like character in politics and there doesn’t appear to be one forthcoming. I wish someone in business did try but the problem Australia faces is it’s effectively a socialist state that has past the point of no return a long time ago unlike the US where they pulled the plug on socialism before it was too late. We on the other hand will have to crash and burn before enough Australians wake up to how rotten things here really are.

PS I’d have to agree with your observations. Here in Australia we have Hanson as a novelty that is expert in making fools of both sides of goverment. Not real difficult in todays political climate. But as the countrys “leader”? That’s not on. But then again…… The offerings of leadership being presented to us come election time, is pretty thin in quality right through the ranks of both sides. State and federally! It is that socialist thread right through the political landscape that is “killing” us.

Hanson is a senator for a start and our PM is elected by the house. One nation could become a force though. We can’t get a Trump because we don’t have a directly elected leader and the house won’t elect an antiestablishment figure. Why do you think we the people were never offered the option of a directly elected president in the last republic referendum? If we had that, we would be a republic today! But the parliament insisted on reserving power to the elites, to ensure we could not get our Trump. There is no way out of the elites for us bar one. Our best and only bet is that conservatives like Bernadi hold balance of power in the house and senate, I think we are very close to that scenario.

You have a horrifying lack of balance of power. Really horrifying, to this independent-minded American. Of course, most of that horror is due to all of your politicians being insane about national energy now. “Down Under” takes on new meaning, in the current circumstances. But don’t kid yourselves…most of our politicians in the USA are insane too, about almost everything…ours are all incompetently meddling in “healthcare”, as if they knew anything actually useful about it. Trump (who is also meddling in healthcare, to his strongest supporters’ aggravation) is pulling a long, long train, of useless foot-draggers and assorted malcontents of every stripe. We have too MUCH balance of power; both major parties are destroying themselves, just to DO something for a change.

RC, as the post below yours points out, Hanson is in the senate. Where people of similar political thoughts to mine placed her. Where she too can shout, as another esteemed politician did, “somebody has to keep the barstardshonest”. Don Chipp knew he’d never be pm as does Hanson it is in the senate her presence and affectiveness will be felt by both sides.

The “WA State Election Wipe-out” for the Libs is a wake up call for the PM. Key strategy - highlight the economic destruction in the EU, South Australia etc caused by fast tracking to “useless RE for base load energy generation”. Instead for the WA & Federal Libs it is non-issue resulting in an inevitable loss of electoral support – is it any wonder the Coalition is down 46/54 in the polls.

You had a coalition, the Nats wanted mining tax 2.0 , the Libs just wanted to win .
One nation did the shonky deal with the Libs and then went from disaster to disaster , mainly foot in mouth .
Labor just shut their mouths closed rank and ended up with the chocolates .
Libs being in power for 8 years in itself would not be a factor if the 8 years was productive and fruitfull , and from what I see a huge budget deficit , no clear direction and a state in decline .
Labor will be keen to make up for years on the outer so your deficit is about to double , and your power is about to go green .
After all you voted for it .

You also have to understand we Australians by and large are too soft because we’ve been the lucky country for too long. It’s time we had a few wake up calls via some hefty shock waves. Labor and the Greens will do the trick.

I bloke i know spent time in Silicon Valley and bemoans the lack of risk that Australian companies take…he cited one time when a local univarsity needed a new physics facility, some of the Alumni started making calls for donations by 2 days later had $150 m USD in pledges…job done…..

When are the electorates right around the country going to hold these politicians and snake oil salesman to account?
Do they not understand exactly why their power bills are where they are at now? Do they understand they will continue to rise and why?
Do they not understand why Victoria was known as the manufacturing ‘capital” of Australia?
I understand that people think they have more pressing concerns come election time. Than the mythical beast, “global warming” and it’s impost on them. But do they? I despair at their lack of understanding of the ramifications to their cost of living being imposed on them by an ideolygy driven minority.
That minority is destroying our way of life in persuit of an ideolygy that has failed in every shape and form right through recorded history!
Is it going to take the total collapse of industry in this country before the people act and say enough is enough!?
South Australias growing power catastrophe is not reverseable without base load power. Read coal fired, not bloody gas.
We know where the coal is but state goverments are making damn sure we won’t know where the gas is.
That catastrophe will be exasperated with the shutting of Hazelwood in Victoria. Ensuring Victorias joining this ideolygy driven government engineered catastrophe.
What is it going to take to jolt people back to their sensibilities and hold these idiots to account!?
As a footnote, how many read the recent offering from “Tony from oz”. On what Hazelwood was generating over a nine day period compared to ALL wind power in this country at the same time?
To say it makes for interesting reading would be an understatement!

“Unskeptical politicians are just firing blanks”. That’s because they’ve been drip-feeding on establishment climate faith chloral hydrate. But wait. There’s more graphic imagery! They’re paralysed into a state of suspended thinking by being stung by the AGW mud wasp – soon to be tucker for hasbeenery.

2/3 of all politicians are lawyers. Apart from patent attorneys, they know no science and generally cannot add or multiply. Most have trouble doing their own tax return.

Legal and history and arts departments for the last half century are the exclusive realm of the left of politics. Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s prize winning essay at Melbourne University was “Make the polluters pay”. Lawyers usually know no chemistry, no physics, no engineering, do not understand computers and cannot add and multiply and interest calculations are usually beyond them. Graphs are a mystery. Sad really as Lawyers are usually fighting over arithmetic.

Of course they want to shut down all our power because they believe CO2 is poisonous. Carbon is dirty. Barnett was unusual in graduating with an economics degree but still his interest in tackling the non science of Global Climate Change was zero.

So all the politicians on both sides of every house are true believers, none more so than Malcolm Turnbull who crossed the floor in a vote for his carbon tax and whose entire family has been famously Labor for generations and his great Uncle was the leader of the British Labor party against rearmament. We would be speaking Japanese now if left to Malcolm’s family.

We the voters are given no choice. Labor and Liberal and National are all true believers. The only one who has called out AGW is Tony Abbott, who called it crap, socialism masquerading as environmentalism. He has a degree in Law, Economics and Politics and as a Blue in boxing at Oxford, he is a fighter. The others just wimp out, none more so than Malcolm.

As Jo points out, WA Liberals and National party would have had a real fighting chance if they had blamed Climate Change policies and the Labor GST and fought Malcolm, but they said nothing. The same in the Victoria government where the Liberals actually voted to ban fracking last week.

The weakness in democracy is that only lawyers are attracted to politics, not engineers or scientists. Plus a range of no hopers (make your own list) and opportunists (another list), people who often could not get a job anywhere else. So it continues to 100% renewables as our coal and gas goes overseas to pay for the import of electric cars and lithium batteries, windmills and solar cells for one of the most energy rich countries in the world. Run by politicians for their own benefit.

Bring back Tony Abbott. Do not believe what the press tell you. The country would rally behind him, but it looks like we have to stock up on candles before anyone realises the country is in crisis. Turnbull’s approach to the Green Germans is precisely that of his family, capitulation. There is a cuckoo in the Liberal nest.

When I say the Labor GST, it was a tax brought in by John Howard, supposedly to catch up a myriad of taxes, most notably the Sales Tax but also Land tax and Payroll tax.

However it was Labor who twisted it around to give WA’s mining income to South Australia who refuse to mine. A good idea has been utterly perverted to fund mendicant states and Barnett only just noticed. He needed to go.

Incidentally, in Victoria Daniel Andrews just doubled land tax, tripled in many cases. The rapacity of this government knows no bounds after increasing the price of coal 300% to our on suppliers. That is a tax on ourselves and our electricity as the only input is coal.

It is often forgotten that GST was part of the major economic reforms engineered by Treasurer Howard and permanent head of Treasury John Stone, their plans confirmed in the (Professor of Economics) Campbell Report. Prime Minister Fraser and cabinet would not agree to proceed with the reform agenda. When Hawke Labor formed government in 1983 with Treasurer Keating they adopted the Report and by 1985 started to legislate the various items with full support from the Coalition in opposition. New Zealand Labour adopted the Report in full.

GST was one of the tax reforms and New Zealand Lange Labour introduced it there but here in Australia Treasurer Keating, furious, publicly announced that we would have no GST because (the wheels have fallen off the cart – economic cart of reforms) hinting that union intervention prevailed. The GST was of course later introduced by the Howard Coalition Government exclusively for state and territory revenue and replacing the federal only Wholesale Sales Tax on all goods, and goods became cheaper as a result. The states agreed to abolish several state taxes such as payroll tax and stamp duties but they reneged on their agreement.

But the GST distribution formula agreed to by all concerned, federal, state and territory governments, was based on the distribution formula used to distribute federal grants to the states and territories before GST which was aimed at replacing most federal grants.

To change the GST 10 per cent amount or distribution formula requires the agreement of federal, state and territory governments. Labor Treasurer Swan convinced Labor state and territory governments to make the change that gave WA a lower GST revenue amount, and based on the record high mining boom state revenue streams. But now the mining industry is struggling and revenue to the state government is well down, but GST revenue has not been restored.

Yes, a Commonwealth tax but administered on a State basis an that was disastrous. WIth many classifications, exemptions and disagreements between states, it was a nightmare of regulations. This was particularly bad when software appeared, because it was neither goods nor a service, so exemptions for manufacturers became impossible. At the time we had to deal with different Sales Tax Commissioners in each state, who disagreed with each other. Also in a distribution system, finding the level of Wholesale was debatable, so the general deal was that you could charge less if you did not tell the public they were paying sales taxes of up to 50% in some categories. People were sued for tax avoidance and businesses closed down until the Taxation department tackled Coles Myer and lost. It was a case of a temporary tax introduce in the 1930s and intended to be hidden but had grown out of control.

Land tax was also a temporary measure to break up squatters holdings. Now people are paying big taxes just on a second house like a beach house or investment house. Again, you get nothing for this. It is just taxation by governments for governments and pays for big government. There is no pretence that it has any function other than raising revenue and punishing the ‘rich’, which now means just about everyone.

So with Carbon taxes. All meant to be hidden. The RET Is so cunning, even Malcolm Turnbull does not realise he is presiding over the world’s largest Carbon tax, a tax so big coal and gas power stations are closing and not being replaced and we cannot afford our own coal or gas. His solution? An emissions tax.

“Little Johnny Howard”kicked this”Climate Change”off,with taking away our guns because of the Port Arthur massacre.He also introduced new land clearng laws,all at the behest of the UN.Then he snuck in an ETS before he got the boot,which helped Julia Gillard to bring in a “Carbon Tax”which Abbott got rid of,but Turdbull snuck it back in,at the last sitting in December.Pity he didn’t bother asking,or telling us about it.
Know you now how a “Mushroom feels.

Tdef , when all the major parties policy’s are the same ( more or less) what choice do the sheeple have .
While Tony Abbott did make the right noise initially his party had drifted too far left, wouldn’t matter right now if Bernardi was pm because the left of the party controls the decisions.
Australia is going to implode on itself and there’s not much we can do about it apart from grabbing some popcorn and watch as the drama/ comedy / tragedy unfolds .
Only when the people have finally had enough of the ten percent inner city minority and media manipulation will change take place .
We are suckers for punishment and the more we get the more we want because we’re told it’s good for us , individual thought is no good for the collective .

My point. Hardly a scientist in parliament and those who are there do not understand science. Do Wong, Lambie, Hinch, Bandt,.. understand any science? The list goes on. There is only one thing which everyone agrees, Carbon is evil and should be taxed out of existence. I doubt anyone of them even understands the Renewable Energy (Electricity) 2000 act and the way it is devastating Australia.

Few politicians think that governments should stop trying to regulate every aspect of the energy market, with the obvious consequences. Banning gas exploration, use of fracking, punishing coal and gas generators, 50% renewables and then wanting to privatise power on the one hand (WA, NSW) while Nationalizing it at the same time and then an emissions tax (Turnbull)?

As with the internet, software and intellectual property, the politicians should stay out of things they do not understand and let the market and market competition set pricing. At present our genius politicians are trying to legally exempt Youtube and Facebook from responsibility for streaming copyright sports events, otherwise known as theft. These people are being handed the advertising rights to major sports events for nothing, stolen from the real owners.

Perhaps if our councils stopped spending on climate change and Palestine, our State governments stopped trying to control electricity and all stopped trying to regulate our lives, Australia would continue to be a great place to live. As it is, we are being legislated to subservience, afraid to speak for fear of being fined $5000 for hurting the feelings of someone we do not even know. We need to drain our swamp, get out of electricity and stop dictating what people pay workers. The growth of big government in Australia is frightening. I wonder how much longer we will even be able to say such things?

Thank you all. I do understand your politics a bit better,(not well yet, but better than before).
Don’t stone me if I am wrong.
Seems like OZ is more like Massachusetts, New York, and California and less like Texas, Utah, Wyoming.

Some political observers have commented on how Labor cunningly used the preference swapping between the Liberals and One Nation against both parties. Since the Labor election victory in WA federal leader Bill Shorten has been repeating that Labor would never swap preferences with One Nation – obviously inferring that they are poisonous far-right people and implying that by swapping preferences with them the Liberals are too. Which is the opposite to what most of us perceive being that the Turnbull Liberals have swung to the left. Maybe this is why socialist roots Labor (read their constitution) wants to push the Liberals to the far right in the minds of voters?

The tactic in a different format was used by the NSW Wran Labor opposition against the NSW Liberal Government in the 1975/76 election campaign and was adopted by the federal Hawke Labor opposition in 1982/83, Labor formed government after both elections.

Tony Abbott attracted votes from Labor at the 2010 and 2013 elections because the Coalition he led had a traditional Liberal conservative image, in 2015 Abbott said he would not stand for socialism masquerading as environmentalism, for example.

Politics is very much about perceptions, most voters are not interested in politics or government unless it impacts on them directly, most are apathetic.

And the union controlled Labor Party are ruthless down to the gutter brawlers with Liberal opponents often not as well organised and definitely adopt the Marquis of Queensbury gentlemanly approach to combating Labor mud throwing.

I have been told that there is a wind farm in Merredin that feeds into our electricity supply. The wind blows strongest at 2 am when the electricity is not needed. As a result, the State has to pay the owner to turn off the turbines because of the Federal Renewable Energy policy.

And people wonder why we have an uncontrollable State debt which the ALP will now fix by building more wind farms ??

I wonder how it actually works in practice? According to the RET, Windmills earn cash at $89 a MWhr generating LGC (carbon certificates) whether they sell the electricity or not.

If I owned a windfarm, I would run it when the wind blew, regardless. It is earning hard cash. This also enables me to undercut other generators at any price as the public have paid for the working capital and I have no running costs, having invested none of my own money.

So I would be surprised if they were paid not to generate electricity. Like solar in the middle of the day when no one wants it, under the RET you are paid the same $89 a MWhr and possibly the operators are obliged to pay you for it as well. So while all coal and gas power stations are losing money, it’s an ill wind which blows no good for wind operators. Besides, if there is any sort of danger or problem, you can just turn it off. As a private company, you are not obliged to supply power to anyone just because there is an emergency.

“Mr McGowan has said over the past month Labor would like to see the coal mining town of Collie to also have a renewable energy industry and coastal Albany be 100 per cent renewable through wave power.”

I was going to be snarky and say there was no part of West Australia that wasn’t part of Western Australia, but then I wondered if the Commonwealth territories of Heard Island or Christmas Island might count.
Both Australian and very west.

yesterday, on jo’s previous thread, I hoped it would snow on the White House today, as Chancellor Merkel was due for a visit and allegedly intended to bring up “CLIMATE CHANGE”…but I didn’t predict this!

13 Mar: ZeroHedge: Tyler Durden: Merkel Postpones White House Trip Due To Blizzard
With over 5,000 flights cancelled already ahead of the imminent Nor’easter, some were wondering whether the flight carrying Angela Merkel would suffer the same fate. Moments ago they got the answer when Sean Spicer announced from the podium that Merkel’s trip to the White House has been postponed to Friday due to weather…http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-13/merkel-postpones-white-house-trip-due-blizzard

13 Mar: Politico: Snow threat pushes back Trump-Merkel meeting in Washington
By Louis Nelson
The White House meeting scheduled for Tuesday between President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been postponed, press secretary Sean Spicer announced Monday, because of a winter storm bearing down on the East Coast…
A major, late-season winter storm is bearing down on the Eastern Seaboard, with blizzard and winter storm warnings posted from Central Virginia all the way north to the Canadian border. While only 4 to 6 inches of snow are forecast for Washington itself, accumulations could be significantly higher in the close-in western suburbs. At Dulles International Airport, forecasts are calling for 8 to 12 inches of snow, beginning Monday night and ending during the day on Tuesday…

13 Mar: CNBC: Christine Wang: School, Trump-Merkel meeting, thousands of flights canceled as blizzard bears down on Northeast
Flights within, into or out of the United States on Monday saw 2,891 delays and another 1,552 cancellations as of 6 p.m., ET, according to FlightAware’s live tracking tool…

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young of South Australia (born in Victorian hippy country) recommends installation of battery power banks around SA.

Maybe Tesla could install and maintain them at their own expense and sell electricity to the market as needed in SA with no government taxpayer subsidies and electricity sold at the market price prevailing?

Thankfully in the Kimberley, each town has it’s own grid, gas power, diesel, or with hydro in Kununurra. Mr 50% can keep well away from here. Colin Barnett was generally despised by both sides, as far as we could see from this distance.
Investing in small generators could be an option now.

Libs lost because they were a directionless rabble lurching to the right. The reaction from people turning up to vote was visceral. Sick of the Libs and MASSIVELY annoyed at the PHON / Lib preference deal. Those are facts from on the ground on the day.

Interestingly a lot of talk in the queue and around the boot about energy. And a lot of it was in favor of renewables and very down on the market manipulation.

anyway, will be interesting to see how the big swings in primary get reflected federally as there are the “directionless, lurch to the right to catch the scared weird little guy voters” reasons for people to turf Turnbull’s lot. Of course maybe Tony will take over, marry Pauline for real and make everyones dreams come true.

Sorry Robert. I just get turned off at some of the pontificating navel gazing goin on.

And hey, good to see the SA guy Weatherrill doing announcements today. Its a big enough issue that the kind of dosh they are throwing around is reasonable even on the chance the “plan” will deal with intermittency. And there is an emphasis on dealing with market issues that are now pretty obvious contributors. Seems to me the suppliers have roughed up and aimed, and possibly inserted their own pineapple.

Phil , everyone’s a commentator and options are like arseholes , everyone’s got one .
As for SA , their problem is their own doing by a misplaced ideology over Co2 .
My fear for the rest of us is the call now for a price on carbon , which apart from making electricity even more expensive will do four fifths of fug all for our climate .

“Announcing the energy plan in the wake of blackouts and load-shedding, SA Premier Jay Weatherill said his government would take control by ensuring the energy minister was given powers to direct the market.

The plan would involve building, owning and operating a $360 million, 250-megawatt gas-fired plant to provide power grid stability and for emergency power needs.

The private sector would build Australia’s largest battery before next summer, with a 100MW output, Mr Weatherill told a news conference.

The venture would be funded from a new $150 million renewable technology fund, he said.”

Build another gas plant because an existing gas plant can’t operate at a profit because of renewables subsidies and legislation.
Build a battery that can provide approximately three whole minutes of power to the state.
Weatherill is a real bright one./sarc

Wouldn’t be ENGIE now would it, you know, the owners of Hazelwood, scheduled to close at the end of the Month. Engie has said that Pelican Point is not for sale. I wonder if they are playing South Australia.

Note where the South Australian premier said this today:

“We have a situation where we are reliant on Victorian coal instead of SA gas … on this side of the border. The stabilisation emerges because we have more generation on our side of the border, so we’re not reliant on the Victorian interconnector.”

umm, neglecting to add that at the end of this Month Hazelwood closes, and power supply via the Heywood Interconnector into South Australia becomes problematic, as Victoria loses almost a quarter of their own power, let alone what they can supply into South Australia.

ENGIE wouldn’t be thinking (naah! surely not) that with Hazelwood closing, South Australia will need to find extra power, and, umm, at any price, so Pelican Point will, umm, suddenly materialise as an option now desperately needed.

Tony, having been pilloried for shutting down their CCGTs because they were losing money, and failing to start up the mothballed one at half an hours notice (without any gas supply) and now being held up as the cause of all of the blackouts, and being expected to supply at a loss until the new arrangements cause them to make a bigger loss, why should they not feel a certain lack of obligation to the State government?
Since the new OCGT won’t be ready before the election (March 17, 2018) I would wonder what odds Centrebet is giving on there NOT being a sudden emergency, or a series of short emergencies, causing short blackouts just before said election.

I am guessing that the Australian government works in a similar way to the UK government.

In the UK, in spite of Brexit, we still have the same politicians in power now that we did before. The only politicians that the major parties put forward are the ones pre-approved by the party. They, by and large, have had the same education, will toe the line and will be subject to all the same lobbying groups.

Nigel Farage is not an MP but managed to become an MEP (Member of the European Parliament) – probably because no-one thought that would matter. After all, MEPs have no real power. However, it gave the people someone to vote for who was not of the political establishment and it gave Farage a platform.

The same with Trump. In the US, the final selection of the president is down to the people. OK, you need to get through the selection process – which was by no means straightforward for Trump. The people got their say.

Somehow, both in the UK and Oz, we need to be able to kick out the establishment politicians and install some MPs who are in touch with the people.

What idiocy.. Lithium is so reactive (explosive) what could he be thinking, imagine what a single molotov cocktail or even a bucket of water/acid, could do to that battery, or does the weather dill intend on keeping it under guard by a regiment of the army 24 x 7.

See this for what a 30 wh LiPo battery can do and then imagine 100MWh 3,300,000 times as much lithium going up

So if the company installing the battery unit forget to install a BMS, allow it to overcharge then someone jumps the security fence and hits it with a big stick the battery is likely to catch fire, wow Bobl your desperation is extraordinary.

That’s a good question Tony, the ABC story is claiming an output of 100mw, doesn’t provide the storage capacity so that could be wrong, let’s say it’s just the basic 100mwh capacity for US$25 million plus all the extras bringing it up to US$40 million, that’s enough to prevent the 40,000 homes being blacked out for 30 minutes as previously occurred in late January, of course the SA could rethink the need for a $360 million gas peaker that will take a year to build and they don’t have any gas for anyway and build 900mwh of capacity that can be filled with cheap off peak, the choice is theirs to make, prepare for the future or build a gas peaker that will be a stranded asset in 2 years time.
Now I’ve had the courtesy of replying you can reply to my post from January 29th 2016 5.1.2.2.7. Still waiting for your response or when you’re wrong do you just hope it goes away?

Love to see how you worked that out Willard , at what kw power consumption per lucky house that gets power while the others get zip , I wonder how they work out who the lucky few are that will get power for Thirty minutes ??

And as to replying to your comment, if I didn’t reply, then that’s one for me, and three for you, and that’s why I gave up on you, basically, because when asked a direct question, you just respond with something else, or change the subject, as you have so artfully done again here.

I would have thought that with your absolute knowledge when it comes to batteries, you would know this without any need for obfuscation.

And where you say, umm, 40,000 homes, and the residential sector comes in at around 25% of total power consumption, might you also explain to us what the other 75% of power consumption, you know, Industry and Commerce do, and how you might isolate just those 40,000 homes from ALL power consumption, and, where those 40,000 homes are, and who you get to select as missing out.

Oh, and when the State was blacked out, the consumption was around 2,500MW. So, 2500MW constant comes in at 2500MWH for a full hour. So half of that is 1250MWH for half an hour. How does 100MWH of batteries cover that? You know, just out of curiosities sake.

Don’t give up on me Tony, there’s still a chance you could convert me away from electric cars and battery storage, good luck holding back the rest of the population as it becomes more affordable, more reliable and just basic common sense.
Yes, of course the state of SA peaked at 2500mwh on the late afternoon of but alas it was short of enough power for 40,000 for 30 minutes, shame that gas peaker plant just happened to be short of a gas supply contract at the same time.
To summarise I’m not sure what you mean by 3 to me 1 to you, it could be 10 to you zero to me for all I care, that won’t change the future and how battety tech will change it for the better.

Again, you just change the subject and talk about what you want to talk about

And as I mentioned in the three earlier questions you failed to answer, you’ve done it again.

Yes, of course the state of SA peaked at 2500mwh on the late afternoon of but alas it was short of enough power for 40,000 for 30 minutes

What part of my earlier response was it that you couldn’t understand where I explained:

Oh, and when the State was blacked out, the consumption was around 2,500MW. So, 2500MW constant comes in at 2500MWH for a full hour. So half of that is 1250MWH for half an hour. How does 100MWH of batteries cover that? You know, just out of curiosities sake.

In the same manner you ignored my earlier questions I asked you, you have no answer for anything other than your ephemeral 40,000 homes, and cars, so what about the other 75% of power consumption, you know, the actual Grid.

2500MWH required. Your Batteries supply 100MWH. You can change the subject and ignore that for all you like, but until you have a direct answer, you’ve got diddley.

Ohhh ohhh I know , the unicorn farts and chicken teeth supply three thousand billion green volts and when the fairy dust kicks in ( sacrifice required) that adds another thousand .
Don’t say I don’t do anything for you Willard .

The problem here is base load power. The government has adopted a policy of renewables to provide a substantial portion of base load power. It crows about its achievement.

It’s solution to its blackout problem (it is extraordinary that it did not foresee that there would be blackouts through reliance on renewables or if it did so and had provided no backup facility it is grossly negligentl) is to provide batteries and gas fired top up. The gas fired top up will have to be heavily subsidised as it will not be allowed to compete with renewables for day to day supply.

So we will now have the extraordinary situation where renewables will require subsidies to supply and fossil fuels will require subsidies to stabilise the system when the renewables inevitably fail.

This ludicrous situation replaces a power system that was stable and required no subsidies. It was a cash cow for the government.

This mob have reached peak stupid. I take that back. When this “solution” fails they will intervene again to cover the problems caused by their previous interventions. It will get progressively worse. With power generation the lifeblood of business which provides the taxation revenue for the provision of all government services this mob have designed a power grid to destroy their taxation base. They will then look to the federal government to raid the taxpayers of other states to keep them afloat.

Peak stupid will then spread and Malcolm will accede to their demands. We will be witnessing the cascading destruction of the Australian economy.

The Australian getting an opinion about batteries from a Caltex executive, no surprise there, and then of course rolling out a scenario that is not going to happen and not the intention of the battery storage in the first place.

Willard you are very one dimensional in your thinking. Let’s say I was an unnamed individual wanting to wage war on western civilisation and I decided to put just ONE BULLET into the 100MW battery pack – What might happen Willard?

I’m sorry to have to point it out but these are an attackers dream in a time of war.

Our electricity needs to be resilient against attack not blow up like a 100kT of TNT if just one bullet hits it.

Good point Bobl, here’s a video of a Tesla powerpack being deliberately set on fire to see how it reacts- https://electrek.co/?s=Powerpack+set+on+fire
As a matter of interest the powerpack installations have spacing between them to allow for any issues in one individual pack, of course a terrorist could carry hundreds of bullets to systematically set fire to every 2mwh powerpack then drive to the next large scale battery site and shoot all those as well, but then he could think 2 dimensionally and use a method that requires a lot less bullets and doesn’t rely on batteries being shot.

Willard you proved to Tony you know as much as me about electricity generation
( sweet fug all) and now you come up with a terrorist carrying hundreds of bullets ?
Don’t know much about ammunition either do you ?

Oh I beg to differ Willard , bobl said if one bullet hits a battery it will explode , now pay attention “one bullet” .
A terrorist carrying hundreds of bullets would have to reload them into cases along with all the other necessary ingredients ( I don’t want to bore you with details) and then he would have hundreds of cartridges .
These cartridges when put in a gun and fired , propel the bullet out of the gun .
A terrorist with a handful of bullets won’t hurt anything .
But if one is fired at a lithium battery depending on the type of cartridge and bullet used I know it will explode .
I think the point Bobl is making is valid , industrial accidents happen , acts of terrorism happen , you would be happy to have a lithium battery that size next door to where you live I suppose .
But others maybe not so much .

Yes Robert, and if one bullet does cause one powerpack to “explode” it won’t cause the nearest powerpack to explode, in fact firing a bullet into the powerpack will likely cause a group of cells to ignite ( maybe myth busters can try it ) but as cells are packed in groups and seperated by a barrier the end result would be a slow movement of ignition thorough the powerpack, in reality firing a bullet into a pack would damage 2% of a 100mwh compound, and as it is often pointed out on here a 100mwh compound is only a fraction of a power grid so anyone trying to bring down a power grid by firing bullets into a battery pack is a pointless exercise invented by Bobl making a pointless post.

You have no idea about ballistics Willard ! You have no idea about bullets
( projectiles) types or caliber that are available or what they’ll go thru and what they’ll do as they are doing it .
I’m starting to doubt you know anything at all about energy production as Tony pointed out and now energy storage .
Look over there it’s Adele !

For gods sake Willard OK so with 1 bullet I could destroy 2% so it follows that a magazine of 50 could ???? Hmm. How about a kg of C4 or an RPG attack? Once its destroyed so simply Musk Guarantees he can replace it in just 100 Days 3 1/2 months – if it were a backup generator I could get a containerised genset or a new fuel tank in place in hours.

I shouldn’t have to spell it out Willard but this solution is FRAGILE. Well the Gas turbine isn’t but the battery sure is. Did Musk look at perforating the pack with a shrapnel attack (EG a pipe bomb) and then a dousing with WATER – see the video I posted about how lithium reacts with water.

How exactly does one put out a lithium fire Willard? Not with water I dare say.

Put aside your silly prejudice and start thinking for yourself. Musks batteries are a solution looking for a problem.

There needs to be an audit of who exactly is making the megabucks from the unreliables. Unions, union super (pension) funds and other elites I expect. It is a massive transfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes to the elites.

An example is the unused, not needed desalination plants constructed based on the deception that there would never again be sufficient rainfall to fill our dams. One retired former Labor state premier from NSW was the consultant who introduced state Labor governments to the foreign based plant suppliers and the unions were cry much involved in these projects in various ways.

The unions call the Wonthagi desal plant in VIC “the goldmine”. They managed to get it classified as a “remote area” with all the tax concessions and allowances that go with that despite it being ten minutes drive from the nearest town of about 20,000 people. Cleaners were and possibly still are getting $100,000 plus.

While Jo has correctly pointed out the hypocrisy of Labor claiming rocketing electricity costs while demanding 50% renewables and Barnett wanting to sell of the power stations to pay the debts, there is a more important problem.

No one in their right mind would buy the WA power stations with the LGC selling for $89 a MWhr. (9c a kwhr). That means to sell 4c worth of coal electricity WA electricity customerss have to buy 9c worth of worthless paper, making your electricity 13c cost. Wind and solar suppliers get the 9c plus whatever they can get for their inconvenient, random power and even make the government pay them for power no one wants at a time it cannot be used.

So Hazelwood is closing because it is losing money. Pelican point Gas is closed. Neither can sell their electricity to cover its costs, so the owners are getting out. Pelincan point LOST $15 Million last year. The Victorian governemnt has paid $500Milion to keep Hazelwood open. Who would buy a coal power station?

No one is going to start up the NSW Black Coal mines as the Greens predict. The 5.5GW of coal and gas power on the East Coast is not going to be replaced. No one is going to invest in coal or gas and besides, it is illegal to explore, frack or even mine, as with the Adani mine.

So Barnett was promising to sell the WA power stations? To whom? Liberal, Labor and the Greens have conspired to make them absolutely worthless. In fact removing Hazelwood and filling in the coal mine is going to cost Andrews $1.6Bn.

Now the incoming Premier will find he cannot sell the power either, but anyone buying power from his State Owned coal power stations has to pay twice as much to companies who supply LGCs, investors, bankers and foreign entities. The money flowing out of WA voters will be incredible and the State Government will not see a cent of it. Worse states including SA and VIctoria and Tasmania and NSW, will have to pay coal power stations to stay open and sell their dirty electricity at a loss or subsidize the product.

We are the governments. We are taxing ourselves and giving the money to people to build windmills which do not work. How incredibly thick are the politicans, as I cannot believe they have any idea what they have done. Did Barnett get any estimates on how much the essential state power stations are worth because I can give it now… $0.

As Tony for Oz commented though, it is puzzling that Hazelwood is closing. Why can’t the biggest, cheapest most reliable power stay open and just charge more. I think it is economics. Power stations run on constant output, baseload. They have to pay for so much coal per hour and rely on balancing demand day and night. Night belongs to night time hot water, slab heating, pumping, industrial processes like aluminium refining. Day time you have gas and hydro to bulk up the output at 9am and 5pm.

However retailers buy the cheapest power then can. If your product is 4c but they have to pay 9c to buy it, they will buy solar or wind whenever it is available and instead of covering your costs, you have to dump your product. If your cost is 2c and you lose the cream, you cannot break even. If you increase your prices, it gets worse. You cannot get under the Wind price as they get 9c even if they give it away, even if they do not sell it.

Then the state who sold you the business for $2.5Billion in 1996 decides to triple the price of coal, your major cost. Time to leave. Forget Sovereign risk, you cannot sue the State in their own courts.

It is a bit like Toyota who did not want to leave. It was decided in the High Court against the Unions that they did not have the right to negotiate with their own employees. So they are paying 3 years wages to their employees for the right to close car manufacturing in Australia. Time to leave.

TdeF:
You are forgetting the mandatory use of renewables esp. from wind. Hazelwood’s economics are based on running, say, 90% of the time. That way they can deliver electricity at $40 (I know less but let’s make the calculation easy). With wind running at a high level roughly 30% of the time, Hazelwood can now only sell its output 60% of the time BUT has to run 90% of the time to provide backup. Their output now has to sell at $60. Meanwhile the wind farms output costs $110 and they couldn’t compete except that some kind (soft in the head) person in Canberra gives them a free Certificate which they can sell for $86-90 every time they sell each unit. So they can afford to undercut Hazelwood at all times.
This is justified as “reducing emissions” when it does no such thing. Germany has over 25,000 wind turbines supplying 32% of electricity generation and its CO2 emissions have declined – possibly – 2.6% in 16 years. (I say possibly because burning rubbish or wood does not under EU rules cause CO2 emissions. German foresters have been advised to keep logs in locked storage.)

The blackouts in SA were caused by power generators gaming the market prices – and the worst price spikes in the country were in QLD, not SA. Needless to say, QLD has virtually no renewables.

Privatisation made a complete mess of California’s power grid when Enron was playing the same games with power generation as what is now happening in Australia.

Allowing Chinese-owned companies to rip us off AND cause blackouts is a complete disgrace – a government that was governing for *our* benefit would re-nationalising all our power infrastructure seeing as our flirtation with privatisation of national infrastructure has delivered us such an appalling degradation of our national security.

Click on Victoria, and then hover your mouse over the 3.3.AM to 4AM period, and note the cost per MWH for electricity, and here it’s around $33 or so.

That’s the cost paid to (mainly) coal fired power, because that’s all that’s running at that hour of the morning. The price they pay is contracted to that price per MWH, and does not change, whether it’s at 3AM or peak power consumption time.

They don’t game the market prices. They have a set contract.

Oh and at 3.30AM in Victoria, Hazelwood was generating 31% of Victoria’s electricity. Right now, at 5.00PM, Hazelwood is supplying around 17% of the State’s power running at 86% (after 53 years) from 7 of its eight units.

Cheapest power in the Country.

If anyone’s gaming the System, it’s wind power, and umm, I was wondering if the Solar FIT is not an actual gaming of the system.

Okay,, so a business could purchase power for $33 a Mwh in the early hours when no one wants it, maybe enough to fill a 100mwh pack, then sell it at peak time for say $14,000 a Mwh? not really gaming the system, more of a case of financial common sense.

Actually TDef, stored in a Battery pack it costs considerably MORE than that because 20% of the electricity is lost on the way through in conversion and storage losses and you need to cover the infrastructure lifecycle costs as well. Batteries are about the worst way “to store” top up energy. Gas or Diesel are far better. You could add at least 5c to that.

Getting desperate now that you have to take to abuse to make a point, but coming from a man who stated that a 6.3kw solar panel system would never get below $5000 in his lifetime, good to see your still alive and kicking 4 years later, or the man that said you’d need to get up on your roof every week and polish those solar panels clean for them to work properly, really? Why? Go ahead and yell some abuse, the reality is settling in that battery storage has arrived, it’s just going to get cheaper as each month goes by, you’re a flat track bully Tony but now the wickets got sticky you can’t handle it.

I note that Elon Musk has installed a solar PV plant with battery storage on a Hawaiian island and it will supply electricity at $A197 per MWh. As coal fired can supply electricity (if unhindered) at $30 a MWh it might be some time before battery storage becomes a vital component, except where it is needed as an excuse for the previous stuff up by a dimwit State Premier.

That’s replacing diesel that was costing $A220Mwh based on the the current low fuel price, it also is based on the warranty period of the packs.
The other factor is the price per unit of energy has reduced around 14% per year, it’s now reducing faster than that.

It’s not about whether the power generator is private or state owned. The carbon tax is the same. Carbon power is 13c a kwhr against wind which can be 0c and they still make a whacking profit, because they get the 9c from you, not the government. They even get 9c if they do not sell their electricity to anyone. It means the closure of all our power. Nothing to do with gaming. That’s a fantasy.

14 Mar: Australian: SA’s $550m energy intervention
by Rachel Baxendale & Michael Owen
The Turnbull government is seeking legal advice on whether the South Australian government’s decision today to “go it alone” on energy policy constitutes a breach of national electricity market rules.
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg described South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill’s policy, announced earlier today, as a “$550 million admission of failure”.
COMMENT: “It’s not a bold plan as it’s been described. It’s a late plan that shuts the gate after the horse has well and truly bolted’’ Read Sid Maher’s comment (LINK)…
Bill Shorten congratulated the South Australian government for “leading” on energy security, accusing the Turnbull government of a lack of action…
The Australian Services Union has backed the state government’s energy plan…
TOP COMMENT AS OF POSTING: by Tim: The reference to today’s report from the Grattan Institute seems to have been taken out of this article?http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/south-australia-energy-plan-360m-gasfired-power-plant-to-be-built/news-story/1ada5e2f160c87202a676170a62df009

The Liberal Party by election day was looking like a dead horse. I’ve never seen a campaign like it. The only thing more dead and gone would be a skeleton in a desert.
One has to wonder whether the effect of seeing the federal Liberal Party so close to being Labor Lite with progressives, has had the chilling effect of filtering down to the State branches and killing enthusiasm for anyone to represent the mark.
It’s worth a thought as to whether one thinks the heart is so shot out of the Party that it is on the way to deletion. It no longer represents anything one couldn’t get from Labor minus the Greens.

As if Malcolm cares! He is Prime Minister. He has achieved his life’s ambition, which is to be famous, in the history books and rich. Life holds nothing more. He could not care less if the country crashes. His money is in safe havens in the Caribbean. As if this is not obvious by now. He does not campaign. That is so beneath him.

13 Mar: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Glenn Branch: Science teachers in the trenches of the climate wars
(Glenn Branch is deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that defends the integrity of science education against ideological interference)
Our children, and their children, and their children in turn, will all need to understand the scientific CONSENSUS on climate change in order to flourish in the warming world in which they will live…
The best of these materials enable teachers to have their students engage directly with the evidence for climate change—temperature fluctuations, sea level changes, ice core measurements, and more — so they can appreciate the strength and the variety of the evidence underlying the scientific CONSENSUS on the reality of climate change and human involvement in it…
Beyond the legislatures of the 50 states, there are the more numerous arenas of the 15,000-odd local school districts, where formal policies that discourage teachers from presenting the scientific CONSENSUS on climate change—or actively encourage them to present climate change denial—are recurrently under consideration…
State by state, and county by county, where there was a lower degree of public acceptance of climate change, teachers were less likely to emphasize the scientific CONSENSUS on climate change and more likely to use instructional strategies that promote doubt and denial among their students—or to avoid the topic altogether…
Teachers need to be reassured that, the posturing of climate-change-denying policymakers notwithstanding, there is robust local support for teaching the scientific CONSENSUS on the reality of climate change and human involvement in it…
So for at least nine million young people per year, their best chance of attaining scientific literacy—and with it a grasp of the scientific CONSENSUS on climate change — is here and now…http://thebulletin.org/science-teachers-trenches-climate-wars10609

14 Mar: Australian: Matthew Denholm: Snubbed at home, company has wood pellet plan for Japan
While the federal government ponders subsidies to “clean up” coal, one Australian firm plans to spend $130 million to export a cleaner coal solution to Japan, after being snubbed domestically.
Global forest manager New Forests and its Tasmanian subsidiary Forico are in the final stages of planning for an industrial wood pellet factory at Long Reach in Tasmania’s north.
The plant would produce about 250,000 tonnes of compressed, cooked wood pellets to export to Japan, where coal power stations are subsidised to substitute the product for black coal, to reduce carbon emissions.

New Forests managing director Mark Rogers told The Australian the densified wood pellets would be made from forestry residues from Forico timber plantations in Tasmania certified by the Forest Stewardship Council…
“The reason it’s going ahead in Japan is because the carbon component is being recognised in the feed-in tariff price. At the moment it’s 24 yen (27c) per kilowatt hour.
“If Australia had a similar signal, then there is no reason why some of our black coal power stations could not use these pellets.”…
Mr Rogers said densified wood pellets, from well managed plantations, could assist with maintaining baseload while storage of renewable energy was improved.
“The energy is stored in the pellets, which act as a battery,” he said…READ ALLhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/snubbed-at-home-company-has-wood-pellet-plan-for-japan/news-story/1efc4205800159cb9f5779e8ea011854

Does this mean that for the same carbon input the power station gets only 73.5% of the power, or to put it another way for the same electricity output CO2 emissions go up 26.5%?
Much the same at Drax in England where the wood side causes 32% increase in CO2 but is very profitable because of subsidies as well as lack of penalties that apply to coal.
I am still trying to work out why chopping down a tree means that the replacement tree will only use CO2 from the original tree, and not that lesser quantity undesirable stuff from a coal fire.

ABC finds a couple of guys to help hype the SA power plan
(the citrus grower and café owner look like ABC fans, see pics):

14 Mar: ABC: SA power: Businesses buoyed by Government power announcement, but question energy costs
By Isabel Dayman and Lauren Waldhuter
The South Australian Government’s plan to reform the state’s energy sector is a “confidence booster” for business owners provided power costs come down, a Riverland citrus producer says…
“Continuity of power supply is a fantastic thing and my confidence is buoyed by the State Government’s announcement,” he said…
Adelaide cafe owner David Bilusich hoped today’s announcement would see the burden of power prices on households ease…
“If it’s easier out there with the bills coming in at home, then it’s easier for them to come out and spend a little bit of extra cash on a coffee every day.”…

Business SA said it had some scepticism about the Government’s plan to take back control of the state’s energy market.
Spokesman Anthony Penny said Business SA supported incentives for battery storage, but extra ministerial powers could antagonise other states.
He said the $360-million cost of a new gas-fired power plant was also concerning.
“We’re talking about a $360-million investment into a backup insurance policy,” Mr Penny said…
But mining giant BHP Billiton, which runs the Olympic Dam mine in Roxby Downs, welcomed the Government’s intervention — provided businesses would save money on power costs…http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/sa-government-plan-must-lower-expensive-power-cost-business-say/8353736

14 Mar: ABC: SA power: Will the energy plan save households and businesses any money?
By political reporter Angelique Donnellan
How much does the plan cost?
Of the plan’s total announced cost of $550 million, $360 million will be spent building a new 250-megawatt gas-fired power plant.
The South Australian Government will put $150 million into a renewable technology fund, offering incentives to private companies to build battery storage.
Another $48 million will be on offer to exploration companies in the search for new gas sources…

Will electricity become cheaper for households?
The answer is pretty much unknown at this point, but since 2008 South Australian household electricity bills have risen about 60 per cent…
How quickly will the plan have a market impact?
The SA Government said parts of its energy plan would start happening immediately, but projects such as the new gas-powered plant would take longer…
Will business find electricity supply more reliable or cheaper?
The mining firm (BHP Billiton) has welcomed the energy plan the Government has outlined, saying it looks forward to “immediate steps being taken which will provide greater energy security for the state before the end of the year”…
Politically, the Labor Government will be keen to avoid blackouts next summer because it will face the voters a year from now, on March 17, 2018.http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/sa-energy-plan-impact-on-household-and-business-bills-in-focus/8353184

July 2016: ABC: Simon Royal: SA budget: Small businesses talk about job creation rather than State Government initiatives
PHOTO CAPTION: David Bilusich behind the coffee machine at his Walkerville cafe. ABC News: Trent Murphy
We returned to the coffee store set up by David Bilusich, who spoke to the ABC ***last year.
Twelve months on, things are going well. The business moved to a larger space, crucially in a much better location…http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-07/sa-budget-small-businesses-talk-about-job-creation/7573724

14 Mar: ABC: Victorian Government to invest extra $20 million in large-scale energy storage
An extra $20 million will be invested in Victoria’s large-scale energy storage, the State Government says, as it works to address the state’s increasing energy needs.
The funding will help companies that specialise in battery, pumped hydro or solar thermal technology partner with network businesses to boost storage to 100 megawatts by the end of next year…
The Government also announced a new cabinet taskforce to work on energy affordability, which will meet for the first time today…
On Monday, The Grattan Institute released a report which found competition in electricity retailing was failing consumers(LINK) nationwide, and that governments needed to step in…

Energy Consumers Australia chief executive Rosemary Sinclair said everyday users had been ignored in energy policy…
Ms Sinclair said consumers would drive changes in the industry by taking greater ownership of their power…
“At the moment, the cost of solar panels and batteries are falling to such a degree that consumers are saying ‘Well I can do that. I’ll put panels on the roof and batteries next to the wall and I’ll be back in charge’”.
“I think what we’re seeing is consumers saying we no longer accept orthodoxy in a range of policy areas. I think that is a very big message to the whole industry here.”http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/victoria-to-invest-extra-20-million-in-energy-storage/8352198

As soon to be closed Hazelwood currently generates more power and steady power than all of the windmills combined, so what good is a battery for windmills and Hazelwood does not need one.

Firstly this is an admission that windmill power is never there when it is needed. Unpredictable, unreliable, unsustainable power.

Utterly inadequate too. What is not admitted is that it is never enough anyway and cannot possibly replace Hazelwood no matter what is spent on batteries.

Why on earth are science and engineering ignorant politicians doing deciding science policy? The plural of ignoramus is probably ignorami, but it was an 17th century made up word, so ignoramuses. (The name of a character in George Ruggle’s Ignoramus (1615), a satirical comedy exposing lawyers’ ignorance.)

I hope someone , somewhere, somehow, is archiving all that is appearing here on the social, economic and political consequences
of taking the real but mild threat of AGW to potentially (but hopefully not) self destructive extremes.
It will provide a valuable resource of the unfolding events for many future PhD students of human folly and technical ignorance, misguided idealism and downright greed.
It would act as a balance to the “official ” history as told by Govt and the biassed media.
Australia is becoming a fascinating experiment.
Fortunately it is one of the few countries that is so inherently wealthy that it can conduct and survive the experiment and the results should be , and no doubt are being, observed with interest around the world.

I guess what frustrates me with politicians is that no one is asking why Hazelwood is closing? The owners say it is unprofitable.
Tony from Oz says it is flat out generating power, more than all the windmills put together. So old is silly. The ‘dirty’ output is clean, harmless and necessary CO2 and warm water, so it is very clean power built by the previous generation.

Until Labor, the Liberals and the Greens understand why Hazelwood is closing, they will never understand the incredible damage they are doing. You can only think the owners of Hazelwood have had enough.

Watch Andrews come back begging with buckets of our cash when Hazelwood stops buying coal, but that cash just goes to France while our own electricity payments go overseas. Is there intelligent life on other planets? Why should there be, there is none here.

The $28billion of GST taxes stolen from WA over the last decade to keep the eastern state property boom going – that’s the real reason McGovern got such a huge swing. Wasn’t it amazing how much money was found for NSW roads and infrastructure when our economy was on the rocks!

Disappointingly I don’t know who is responsible for this theft. I seem to remember Alannah MacTiernan was a senator in Canberra back then. We have 10 senators in Canberra who are elected to represent our state interests – obviously they failed when this law was passed. Its well past time for a reckoning.